Cotton
Cotton and how it Moved America The history of the United States is deeply imbedded in the soft white fluffy fibers that we know as cotton. Cotton for a long time was the rope that our county used to gain great heights in the in the world, making it easy for all other nations to see us. Still this plant fiber did not just miraculously fall from the heavens like manna in the desert, many factors that stretch over millions of years made it happen. The shallow seas of the cretaceous, climate, the corrupt use of enslaved men and women, the amazing innovation of British industries, and Eli Whitney’s stroke of inspiration to create the cotton gin; through the result of all these factors, damn good cotton conditions, enticed men, with the greed of money, to put down there tobacco pipes and do all that it took to grow cotton. Still today cotton is money, 75% of the American dollar to be exact.This influential aspect of cotton changed the world between 1780 and 1860, cuting deep mar ks in the stone of history. The Shallow Seas and the Black Belt 139 million years ago the Americas did not at all look as is does today. Two land masses separated by huge far reaching expanse of tropical shallow sea that also submerged many of the southern states. Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia all a part of an ancient coast line where much sea life thrived, but the organism that made the largest impact was the smallest. Tiny plankton populated this coastline in huge masses. Over millions of year there tiny skeletons collected into an enormous layer of chalk. That chalk, both porous and basic, helped create a band of rich dark soil that stretches across many southern coastal states, from Louisiana to Virginia; a region which is called the Black Belt (McClain, paragraph 2). This fertile band of soil was and still is one the most agriculturally valuable region in the United States, especially in its perfect compatibility with the cotton plant. It is so compatible that before machine pickers and huge ginning operations of the 1940’s, a plantation owner of the 1830’s was able to harvest 4,000 bales of cotton weighing 450 pounds, an amount unimaginable in the regions above and below the black belt(McClain, paragraph 3). The Drive for Slavery In 1790 cotton was barley a commercial crop but the years following until 1860 cotton production and its value exploded. Before 1790 there were very few counties that had more than two hundred slave and almost none that had at most six hundred. The years following, these numbers became very common and also these numbers moved from the Chesapeake region to the Black Belt (mappinghistory, into – summary). In 1790 the U.S census reported a total slave population of 694,207 by 1860 there were 3,950,546 (U.S census records, pop. chart). The massive increase in population is of direct coincidence to the expanding production and price increase of cotton. It was common thought that a prime field hand, a slave that worked in the fields, was worth ten thousand times the price of cotton. Thus if the price was currently 12 cents to the pound a male field hand was auctioned around $1,200 (Dattel, pg. 53). The movement of slave population also directly correlates with the production of cotton operations. In 1850 all the cotton state, SC, GA, AL, TN, MS, LA, FL,VA, NC, and AR, contained more than 2,800,000 of the entire slave population (JRSSL, vol. XX. pg. 10). The production of bales and the population of slaves are nearly identical. To see this on an interactive map go to http://mappinghistory.uoregon.edu/english/US/US18-00.html. By 1860 the cotton industry was worth today $4,600,000,000 in exports alone, and when one considers all other businesses related to cotton other than exportation in the U.S a much larger number can undefinably be estimated. Unfortunatly this gigantic sum of money slavery going. Wealth was the corrupt blood that kept the evil beast of the slave institution alive, thriving, and growing until the only thing that could put it down was civil war. The British Industry Without the textile mills of the British, cotton would not hold a place in American history. It all started with creation of several ingenious inventions that allowed for the mass production of yarn and the weaving there after. The spinning jenny, the water loom, the spinning mule, and the power loom, a few of the innovation of the industrial revolution and most of the main innovations that allowed for the creation of mechanized mills, the forefathers of factories. Textile mills made the spinning of yarn and the weaving of cloth a huge industry, hungry for raw materials. The British had a rather large appetite for cotton due to the fact that industrial inventions made in Britain stayed in Britain. The technology was kept as a national secret, other nations could not compete with the cheap, high quality British fabrics; for this reason grand amounts of wealth were made. A monopoly over the textile business was born and the United States had the resources and capability to feed the appetite. In 1787, 22,600,000 pounds of cotton were imported into Great Britain, none of which was from the United States (JRSSL, vol. XX. pg. 4). In 1801 the U.S was exporting 25,053,750 pounds of cotton to the Brits, by 1855 the U.S was exporting 441,788,400 pounds of cotton to the British (JRSSL, vol. XX. pg. 21). This most recent amount was 76% of all cotton imported into Great Britain, and still even in 1846 88% of all British cotton was imported from the U.S. It is even more impressive that from 1811 to 1860 the United States had supplied more than 50% of all British cotton per year and the percentages increased almost every year (JRSSL, vol. XX. pg. 18-19). The Cotton Gen Eli Whitney was born 1765 to a middle class family in Massachusetts. He received a formal education at Yale College. After graduation Eli took a trip to Savannah, Georgia where he stayed at Mulberry Grove Plantation. There he was asked to put his degree to work and try to create a machine that could take care of the tedious process of cleaning the seeds from cotton. At Mulberry Grove plantation the cotton gen was invented and months later was patented (Clark, paragraph 1-2). The cotton gen forever changed the cotton production process. Before, a laborer working all day could separate only a pound of cotton, the cotton gen enabled a single man to separate fifty pounds in a day. Suddenly the farming of cotton by means of a plantation style operation, with free labor, became practical and extremely profitable (Tindall/Shi, pg. 381). With the innovation of a hand cranked device that pulled the cotton fibers through metal teeth separating them from the seed, a farmer could now practically plant much more cotton which he could sell for huge prices on the market. Consequently British textile mills demanded more cotton wool, and the price of slaves sky rocketed due to greater value one man or woman could produce. The invention of the cotton gen, and the mass use of it, were equity responsible, in respect to British textile industry, in making cotton so influential through such a brief moment in history. Without one or the other it is very unlikely that either of them would have amounted to the greatness that they both had. Conclusion Cotton truly changed history, for the better and the worse. It created huge amounts of wealth for two nations, cotton occupied fifty percent of all U.S exports and most of it, hundreds of millions of pounds, were sent to Great Britain. It drove the expansion, exploit, and movement of an entire people, enslaved to do the work of other men. It was the raw material that fueled a massive industrial revolution overseas, giving the British the ability to create new and amazing invention, outside the textile industry, that forever changed the world. Even though, none of this would have been possible without the perfect combination of factors. The shallow seas of the Cretaceous period and the microscopic plankton within them, creating the perfect, rich, porous soil of the Black Belt. The pre-existing demand for cotton in the textile mills of Britain, mostly making wool yarn before the cotton explosion. The invention of the cotton gen, making large scale cotton operations practical and doable. Because of all of these things cotton had become one of the most influential plants in all of history. Work Cited Clark, John G. "Whitney Invents the Cotton Gin." Salem History. Salem Press, 2006. Web. 19 Nov. 2013. Weigmann, Hans-Dietrich H. "Cotton." Britannica School. N.p., n.d. Web. Nov. 2013. Buchanan, Robert A. "History of Technology." Britannica School. Britannica Digital Learning, n.d. Web. 4 Dec. 2013. Danson, J. T. "On the Existing Connection between American Slavery and the British Manufacture." Journal of the Royal Statistical Society of London. Vol. XX. London: John William Parker and Sons, 1857. 1-21. Print. Dattel, Gene. Cotton and Race in the Making of America. Lanham, Maryland: Ivan R. Dee, 2009. Http://books.google.com/. Google. Web. 19 Nov. 2013. "Total Slave Population in the United States." Thomaslegion.net. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Nov. 2013. . McClain, Craig. "How the Presidential Elections Are Impacted by a 100 Million Yea Old Coastline." Deep Sea News. Deep Sea News, 27 Nov. 2012. Web. 19 Nov. 2013. "The Spread of Cotton." Mapping History. Mapping History, n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2013. Dattel, Eugene R. "Cotton in a Global Economy: Mississippi (1800-1860)." Mississippi History Now. Mississippi Historical Society, n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2013.